As is known, poor cleaning leads to deterioration of a conveyor belt.
In the state of the art, systems with scrapers, brushes and the like have been proposed, which are relatively ineffective, cause wear and damage the belt, must frequently be replaced and rapidly lose their effectiveness.
The cleaning of conveyor belts by means of a wire, piano string or cable has also been known for a very long time. In the majority of these devices, this wire or cable is located on the periphery of the main drum. The wire is either immobile or driven with a receiprocating movement, transversely relative to the belt.
However, these processes prove to be relatively unsatisfactory. In fact, if the pressure exerted by the wire against the belt is low, the cleaning effectiveness is virtually zero, and if the pressure exerted is high, the wire wears very rapidly and frequent interruptions for its adjustment or replacement are necessary.
The troublesome particles to be removed are subjected to four main forces, namely their weight, their inertia, their actual adhesion to the belt and their adhesion to one another. Placed in contact with the belt, a cable at rest or driven with a movement along its axis only makes it possible to overcome the inertia forces and, partially, the forces of adhesion to the belt. In fact, the particles encountering the obstacle created by the cable stick to the latter and finally pass between the belt and the cable. By causing the cable to vibrate, an attempt has thus been made to free the cable of the agglomerates, which thus become dislodged.
In the state of the art, the vibrations can be produced in a number of ways using various sources, namely an electromagnet, an unbalanced motor or the like.